Many people enjoy fishing, but no one enjoys changing fishing lines. A typical bass fishing line is about one hundred fifty meters in length, and it takes between twenty to thirty minutes to change. Lines of the length used in deep sea fishing are of course much longer and take even longer to change.
All over the world, people remove old fishing line from spools by hand. By the time the process is over, a large mound of unspooled, disorderly line is at the person's feet. Many people thoughtlessly leave the mess where it lies, or toss it into the body of water being fished, and birds and other life forms eventually become tangled therein and die. More thoughtful people attempt to dispose of the tangled mess in a more responsible way, but the large size of the unspooled mound of thread makes disposal difficult and inconvenient.
Professionals and active amateurs change their lines every couple of tournaments, or every couple of weeks. Many professionals and active amateurs own multiple fishing rods, so the line changing task becomes a major chore for those people.
Thus, there is a clear need for a device that will quickly remove long lengths of fishing line from spools. The ideal device would not only remove a line quickly, it would remove the line in an orderly fashion so that the removed line would be tightly wound and compact, just like a new line from the factory. Such a small, neat line would be easy to recycle or dispose of properly; the fisher could simply stick the small line into a pocket, for example, for temporary storage.
If such a device existed, people who fish would enjoy their job or hobby more, and would be able to spend more time doing what they like and less time removing lines.
More importantly, the killing of birds and other wildlife by discarded mounds of monofilament line would be ended.
The prior art, when considered as a whole in accordance with the requirements of law, neither teaches nor suggests to those of ordinary skill in this art how the age-old method of removing fishing line from a spool by hand could be improved. Nor does the art contain any suggestions as to how a long length of line could be removed and simultaneously placed into a small coiled configuration to facilitate its convenient storage, disposal, or reuse.